postID: 6879; title: The Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
groupKey: secondary
groupKey: other
The Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
O Lord, we beseech thee, make us to have a perpetual fear and love of thy holy Name, for thou never failest to help and govern those whom thou hast set upon the sure foundation of thy loving-kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Proper 7)
Array
(
[date] => 2013-06-16 11:00:00
[scope] =>
[year] =>
[month] =>
[post_id] => 520
[series_id] =>
[day_titles_only] =>
[exclusive] => 1
[return] => formatted
[formatted] =>
[show_date] =>
[show_meta] =>
[show_content] => 1
[admin] =>
[debug] => 1
[filter_types] => Array
(
[0] => primary
[1] => secondary
)
[type_labels] => Array
(
[primary] => Primary
[secondary] => Secondary
[other] => Other
)
[the_date] => 2013-06-16 11:00:00
)
1 post(s) found for dateStr : 2013-06-16postID: 6879 (The Fourth Sunday After Pentecost)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 6879; date_type: variable; year: 2013
Variable date => check date_calculations.
=> check date_assignments.
=> NO date_assignments found for postID: 6879
displayDates for postID: 6879/year: 2013
Array
(
[0] => 2013-06-16
)
postPriority: 3primaryPost found for date: 2013-06-16 with ID: 6879 (The Fourth Sunday After Pentecost)
The Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
Array
(
[date] => 2013-06-16 11:00:00
[scope] =>
[year] =>
[month] =>
[post_id] => 520
[series_id] =>
[day_titles_only] =>
[exclusive] => 1
[return] => simple
[formatted] =>
[show_date] =>
[show_meta] =>
[show_content] => 1
[admin] =>
[debug] => 1
[filter_types] => Array
(
[0] => primary
[1] => secondary
)
[type_labels] => Array
(
[primary] => Primary
[secondary] => Secondary
[other] => Other
)
[the_date] => 2013-06-16 11:00:00
)
1 post(s) found for dateStr : 2013-06-16postID: 6879 (The Fourth Sunday After Pentecost)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 6879; date_type: variable; year: 2013
Variable date => check date_calculations.
=> check date_assignments.
=> NO date_assignments found for postID: 6879
displayDates for postID: 6879/year: 2013
Array
(
[0] => 2013-06-16
)
postPriority: 3primaryPost found for date: 2013-06-16 with ID: 6879 (The Fourth Sunday After Pentecost)
The reading_id [310473] is already in the array.
reading found matching title 'Galatians 2:15-21' with ID: 310361
The reading_id [310361] is already in the array.
reading found matching title 'Luke 7:36-8:3' with ID: 153473
The reading_id [153473] is already in the array.
No update needed.
Scripture citation(s): II Samuel 11:26–12:10, 13-15; Galatians 2:15-21; Luke 7:36-8:3
A Sermon by
Fr. Mead
on
II Samuel 11:26–12:10, 13-15; Galatians 2:15-21; Luke 7:36-8:3
✛
Why the Lord Loves King David and Mary Magdalene
Array
(
[0] => 60712
[1] => 60763
[2] => 60757
)
book: [60712] (reading_id: 310473)bbook_id: 60712
The bbook_id [60712] is already in the array.
book: [60763] (reading_id: 310361)
bbook_id: 60763
The bbook_id [60763] is already in the array.
book: [Array ( [0] => 60757 ) ] (reading_id: 153473)
bbook_id: 60757
The bbook_id [60757] is already in the array.
No update needed for sermon_bbooks.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
King David’s great sin is well known. He took beautiful Bathsheba, the wife of his faithful soldier Uriah, in adultery and conceived a child which would die. To hide his deed he tried twice in vain to get Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba while on duty; then arranged through his commander to have Uriah fatally exposed in battle. The Lord was displeased and revealed the matter to the prophet Nathan who was close to the king. Nathan convicted David by telling a story about the abuse of power by a rich man against a poor man which enraged David. In one of the most dramatic confrontations in the Bible or all literature, the king said the man deserves to die, etc. “Thou art the man,” announced the prophet.
Rather than kill the messenger, David confessed. Nathan pronounced forgiveness – but there would be hell for David to pay for much of his reign. Yet after all is said and done, with all his faults paraded before the world by some of the most precise chronicles in antiquity, Scripture calls King David the man after the Lord’s own heart and the sweet psalmist of Israel. Psalm 51, the Miserere whose high C’s we hear the boy trebles sing on Ash Wednesday and Holy Week, is by tradition the psalm David wrote after his moment of truth with the prophet Nathan. “Wash me throughly from my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin.”
The one thing you can say about David is that he loved and worshiped the Lord from his youth up; and his love was connected with his capacity to repent of his sin, and to take his penitential medicine without complaining.
In today’s Gospel Jesus speaks of the same matter in connection with the woman of the city, a sinner, who burst in on the Pharisee Simon’s dinner party to bathe and anoint Jesus’s feet – out of love and gratitude for his ministry to her. She rose with Jesus’ direct forgiveness and went her way in peace. Though it is not certain, tradition has connected this woman with Mary Magdalene who is mentioned a little later on.
The Pharisee host, Simon, is put off by all this and Jesus reads his thoughts. The woman’s forgiveness and her love for Jesus correspond, just as the Pharisee’s pinched sense of grace and love correspond. Like Nathan with David, Jesus tells Simon a story. This is about two forgiven debtors and the relationship between forgiveness and love: the greater and deeper the forgiveness, the greater and deeper the love and vice versa. Jesus’ Pharisee host highly esteems his own uprightness, judges others, and measures his own sins lightly – just as his love and respect for Jesus are light, not even extending customary courtesies of greeting. The woman, on the other hand – well, without knowing her many sins, we know she loved greatly and was greatly redeemed.
I do not wish to beat up all Pharisees, but inflated self-regard is dangerous. It offends God and everyone else; it stinks of pride. Pharisees can be saved, if they climb down to allow it; sometimes they are knocked down. Jesus had Pharisees among his disciples: Nicodemus, for example, and Joseph of Arimathea. But today we heard from Saint Paul formerly Saul of Tarsus. Here was a church-persecuting Pharisee, quite sure of himself under the Law, but he was upended by a confrontation with the risen, ascended Lord Jesus. Paul saw that he and all the rest of us, are justified – are right with God – not by works of the law but by faith in Christ. He speaks today of his new life rising from his meeting with the risen Lord: “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me”
When I was a youngster the stories of King David and the woman at the Pharisee’s dinner party affected me. I wanted to experience, as they did, that direct personal forgiveness of my particular sins. How do you do it, when Jesus has ascended into heaven, and two millennia of church history have intervened?
Then as an adult, and a new Episcopalian in college and an avid student of the Book of Common Prayer, I began to put some things together. The Church, I realized, is the visible, sacramental Body of Christ. “The ministry of reconciliation, which has been committed by Christ to his Church, is exercised through the care each Christian has for others, through the common prayer of Christians assembled for public worship, and through the priesthood of the Church and its ministers declaring absolution.” These words introduce the rite of the Reconciliation of a Penitent in the Prayer Book, 1979, but all Prayer Books contain various ways and means of this sacramental reconciliation. Sacramental Confession is available to all who desire it. So I took it up, and it has been an essential part of my life since.
I remember my first confession, in 1968. I felt as though I was in good company, not by virtue of my sins, but by virtue of confessing them and hearing direct forgiveness from the priest. And as I press on and try not to sin – though it seems always to cling – I would much rather be in the company of the woman at Jesus’ feet than with Simon the Pharisee.
If you want to look more into this matter, come speak with one of the clergy; it’s why we’re here. And we’re all fellow-pilgrims of the way of growth and repentance.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
